Records for Life

During my first semester at MICA, my classmates and I participated in the Records for Life competition sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We set out to conceptualize and design a global children’s health records system that would facilitate accuracy and family engagement.

My team’s proposal focused on instilling a sense of value to the record itself and creating redundancy in the record keeping process, through a hybrid of high- and low- tech solutions.

It's not really a brainstorm without Post-Its

We kicked off the project with a weekend workshop led by visiting designer Islam Elsedoudi of IDEO. Together we brainstormed, prototyped, and created narratives to gain a better understanding of the experiences that caregivers, health workers, and government survey-takers have with current child health records.

Our proposal was a clear, adaptable, portable, durable, and valuable solution for both health workers and caregivers. An initial cover photograph adds value to the record, and the promise of a final photograph creates an incentive towards completion of the vaccination cycle.

When technology is available, text-message based reminders and information can help encourage family compliance and vaccination comprehension.

By utilizing optical mark recognition, the form simplifies record keeping and allows for easy reproduction and digitization, adding scalability and redundancy in the medical data system.

There were over 300 submissions from 41 countries, and the Gates Foundation tested the top 40 prototypes in focus groups around the world. Our team was a top-ten finalist, as well as a top-tier Honorable Mention winner, coming in after the Grand Prize winner.